Re: RSG Idea

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <FutureT-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 8/11/01 4:14:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

> 
>  Hello, all 
>  
>  What about this, instead of having pointed electrodes, couldn't you have 
>  wider electrodes on the RSG disk, ? So that your gap would conduct 
longer... 
> 
>  Kind of hard to explain with words. I have a pic of it at 

Jonathon,

Long conduction times are to be avoided.  If the gaps are wide,
the rpm slow,  the bps high, and the capacitor small, a bad
condition called "re-firing" of the gaps can occur.  This happens
when the gaps line up and the gaps fire, then they fire again
while still aligned.  This draws heavy current, but causes
great inefficiency.  Basically the normal conduction time of
a gap cannot be controlled by electrode thickness.  Rather
the quenching is controlled by the streamer loading of the
coil.  In other words, the sparks suck the energy out of the
coil forcing the qap to quench when it runs out of energy.
Even if the electrode had "0" width, it would not reduce the
conduction (quench) time.  This is because the gap spark
"jumps" ahead, and fires before the gaps line up.  It may
be useful to round off the faces of the electrodes so they
fire at a higher voltage, and I often use this method on my
rotaries (not that I can see any improvement in performance).
I tend to make my electrodes somewhat thick so they run
cooler.  Thick electrodes may actually quench faster than
thin ones because they run cooler at the tip.

John Freau